


Something Painful, Something Precious

by Secret_Pizza_Party



Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Banter, Blind Kanan Jarrus, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/M, Fade to Black, Family Feels, Found Family, Implied Sexual Content, Kanan Jarrus & Hera Syndulla as Space Parents, One Shot, POV Hera Syndulla, Parental Hera Syndulla, Parental Kanan Jarrus, Team as Family, True Love, except maybe the imaginary twilek evolutionary biology, handwaving alien evolutionary biology, implied future pregnancy, probably, that kid had to get conceived SOMETIME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secret_Pizza_Party/pseuds/Secret_Pizza_Party
Summary: One quiet night alone on the Ghost, neither Hera nor Kanan can sleep. A one-on-one conversation in the common room sees them discussing the fragile family they've built now. Now that Sabine has returned to Mandalore, Kanan feels like something important is ending; Hera, on the other hand, decides it's time to take her first secret step toward writing a new chapter together.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Something Painful, Something Precious

Hera wakes alone. The chronometer on her cabin wall says that anyone with a molecule of common sense should still be sleeping, but when she puts her hand on the far side of her bunk, the blankets have gone cold.

The recycled air in the ship is chilly; she grabs the discarded sweater at the foot of the bed and pulls it on over her too-thin pajamas. It’s not hers and it’s too big by far, draping almost to her knees, but it’ll serve. Wearing it is the sort of intimacy she would usually be more careful about concealing: she has to be captain to the _whole_ crew, doesn’t she? She always takes care not to look as if she has a special favorite—it wouldn’t be appropriate, wouldn’t be fair, to the rest.

But the only one awake right now is the same person who left the sweater on her bed, so she allows herself this one little luxury. Barefoot, she pads out of the cabin, eyes adjusting unwillingly to the lights in the corridor. Past Sabine’s empty room, door open, bed neatly made; its occupant has gone home to Mandalore to take her rightful place among Clan Wren. Past Zeb and Ezra’s door, too. This one is closed, but Zeb’s spectacular snoring leaks through. Despite the noise, the sound of labored breathing reaches Hera. Someone is in the common room, and not for a midnight snack.

Still moving quietly, she leans into the common room’s doorway to watch. Kanan sweeps through the movements of one of his Jedi forms—Hera doesn’t know which one, has never been able to tell them apart—with slow, deliberate practice. In the close confines of the ship, his lightsaber is unignited: an imaginary blade for an imaginary opponent.

Sweat shines on his back and shoulders; he’s been at this for a while now. Hera fishes a clean rag from the wall storage and tosses it his way. “Think fast, Master Jedi.”

The blade ignites just in time to slice through the middle of the towel. Sparks of burning fabric swirl through the air and settle on the decking as Kanan steps back, cocking his head, and kills the blade. “Hera?”

In the corner, Chopper disengages from the wall socket where he’s been charging. He rolls over to the ruined rag to dispense a load of fire-retardant foam, smothering the wispy smoke and smoldering towel in a big mushy mess. Not a single beep, but he rotates his dome back and forth, making sure they’re both aware of what happens to those who dare disturb his slumber. “We’ll clean it up, Chop,” Hera sighs, and Chopper glides back to his socket in affronted silence. She grabs the mop. “You were supposed to catch it.”

“Well, I _did_ catch it.” He reaches out, and she puts the mop in his open hand. “With my lightsaber.”

“An unconventional choice.” She bends down with a dustpan, which he nudges the sludgy foam toward with the mop. His swabbing technique is less well developed than his lightsaber skills, and Hera has to move her feet out of the way. “Couldn’t sleep, love?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Kanan leans on the mop. “It feels strange. Out of balance. Having Sabine gone.”

Most of the foam has made its way into the dustpan; Hera carries it to the trash and shakes it out. “We cut the shipboard levels of teenage hormones by half. Of course things feel different.” Not that Sabine has been a particularly moody teenager, as far as humans go, but on the whole Hera doesn’t understand how the species manages. Thanks to Ryloth’s often-unforgiving environment, Twi’lek females have evolved the capacity to consciously switch their fertility on and off—seizing the smallest window of safety and security to grow their families, no need to wait for a window to open. Or, for that matter, to fear it hasn’t shut completely before being intimate with a partner. Hera can’t imagine being in a constant state of pheromonal flux and doesn’t want to. “Besides, we send small teams out on missions all the time. This isn’t really different.”

“Isn’t it?” He takes his weight off the mop and stows it back in its customary corner. “When we send the kids out on assignment, we know they’re coming home. This time, _home_ is where we sent her _._ ”

This isn’t the easy come-back-to-bed chat Hera planned on. She takes up a comfortable perch on the edge of the dejarik table to settle in for a longer conversation. “I trust her to do the job she needs to do. And I believe we’ll see her again.”

“So do I. That doesn’t mean things haven’t changed in a real way. Maybe it’s not an ending. But I can’t help but think it’s the beginning of one.” There’s an undercurrent of frustration there beneath the Jedi calm; Hera waits for him to find its natural outflow. Kanan has never been one to sit on these kinds of things until they fester.

Sure enough, his shoulders roll forward with a massive sigh, and he slides to a seat on the dejarik bench. She turns herself to face him, setting her feet on either side of his legs. “There’s a lot I’ve haven't ever told you about the Jedi Order,” he says slowly, picking through words, sorting through emotions. A corner of his mouth quirks upward. “Some of it because it’s _incredibly_ boring. Some of it because it’s—because there are things I’d rather not think about.” His jaw hardens for a moment and she knows that in the sightless space between them, he’s seeing a dead master, a broken order scattered to the stars. “The Jedi had rules. A _lot_ of rules. Including one against any kind of emotional attachment.”

“No emotional attachments?” She slides back in mock dismay. “Far be it from me to be the one to drag you off your Jedi pedestal—”

He catches her by the hand, gently. His thumb rolls over the hard skin where her fingers join her palm, where even a good pair of gloves can’t keep away the calluses earned by a life of hard work. “Another reason I don’t tell you about Jedi stuff is that I have a vested interest in you _not_ knowing certain things.” They share a smile, or rather, he shares one with her. Hers, unseen, is for her alone. “I was never supposed to have _any_ of this.”

“Romantic entanglements,” she says, at the same time he says, “A family.”

That hangs in the air, taking up space between them that Hera isn’t sure she wants to share. A key turns inside her, unlocking something painful, something precious. “Kanan—”

“I know I’m not her father, or Ezra’s. I know I should accept losing what we've had here, for a while; that I should be grateful for all the stolen time I got. That I _still_ have.” His hand tightens, squeezing her fingers, as if he’s trying to reassure her and not himself. “A better Jedi could have done that. A better man. But I can’t. I don’t know how.” He grimaces. “Not sure I want to.”

It takes Hera a moment to nudge her voice out of her throat. Family is a complicated topic for her, a tight knot in her chest that threatens to unravel now all at once, too fast for her to make sense of the snarl. “I can’t say I’ve known many Jedi,” she says slowly. “But I’ve known a lot of men. There _aren’t_ any better ones.” She taps her thumb on his fingers, trying to navigate the right way to say what she wants to. “The fall of the Jedi was a tragedy for the galaxy. And for _you_. But that doesn’t mean everything they did was right and perfect. Do you think you’d be better off without _emotional attachments_? Without all of us?”

“No.” There’s no hesitation in that answer. “The masters used to say that attachment led to the dark side. That to love something too much was to fear to lose it; and fear leads to hate, and hate—you get the idea.” He shakes his head. “Even if I’d finished my training, I was never going to be one of the great Jedi philosophers. I don’t have the answers. Maybe the past _should_ be left behind. I sure spent a lot of time trying to do that, before I met you.” His head falls forward, toward her; she rests her forehead on his crown. “But without ties to the past, or a future to hold onto, it’s easy to feel adrift. Especially when this crew starts to unravel.”

“Children grow up and leave the nest.” She runs her hand through his hair where it falls loose down the back of his neck. “It’s a natural part of life. Inevitable. But that doesn’t make it easy.”

“I know.” He nods, against the curve of her palm. “Nothing good is ever easy.”

But he’s wrong, for once, because _this_ is so good, isn’t it, the two of them here, together, and so easy too, inevitable in its own right, a black hole of love at the center of her life that devours all doubt and fear and worry. How could the Jedi of old have dismissed such attachments? Hera has never been braver than when Kanan is by her side.

Maybe it’s selfish, to steal these moments when there is so much work left to do. And no, she doesn’t like to think about the future, _their_ future, knowing how short it might be for two people in their line of work; but right then, right there, she makes a decision about it. A terrifying one, a wonderful one. But with him here, she can face it with courage. Maybe she’ll live to regret it, but she doesn’t think so. She’ll tell Kanan about it, someday, in the fullness of its time. But for now, it’s hers and hers alone.

She slides her fingers deeper into his hair and tugs it lightly, lifting his head. “Kanan.” The wry twist of his mouth softens where his lips meet hers. When they break apart, she keeps him close, her hand following the line of his jaw to hold him firmly by the chin. “You will always have a family,” she vows. “Whatever else happens. However far apart we are. Wherever life takes us. That is a _promise_. Nothing can change that, love.”

He smiles, but there’s sadness in it, and it’s the kind that he doesn’t want her to read—because she is its author. He turns his head, so that she can’t look him full in the face. “We don’t have to talk about our future.”

“No. We don’t need to talk at all.” She turns her wrist, clasping his hand as he clasps hers. “Come back to bed, love.”

“I still don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

“I didn’t say anything about _sleeping_ yet.”

His eyebrows rise. This time, she puts his fingers to her face, so he can feel her smile. She slides off the table and he lets her lead him, by the hand, back to her cabin.

If he were Twi’lek too, he might be aware of the soft shift in pheromones, might notice the subtle alterations that would announce, to anyone of the right species, that a reproductive system had opened for business. But he isn’t, and she isn’t telling. Not yet. And maybe nothing will come of it: not all species are compatible in that way. In all their travels she’s never met anyone, that she knows of, who is half human and half Twi’lek. And maybe, in the morning, she’ll change her mind anyway, retreat back into the easy comfort of the status quo.

But here, and now, and after, in the warm and fragrant bed, with Kanan’s breathing fading to slow regularity against her cheek and his arm a reassuring weight across her waist, it’s easy to imagine that this can last. Family is forever; the kind you find, the kind you make together. No one can take that away, and nothing can change it, not death nor distance.

Hera has never made promises that she doesn’t intend to keep.

###


End file.
